Thursday, April 27, 2006

H. L. Mencken -

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Norman Mailer -

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Samuel Adams -

If you love wealth better than Liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of Freedom, go home from us in peace, We ask not of your counsels or arms, Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you, May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Marcus Tullius Cicero -

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.